Prisons

[Mathew]

I've been reading up on prisons as part of my Sociology revision and apparently it costs the state £38,000 per prisoner, per year. When you multiply this by the number of prisoners, it means a hefty sum of £11 billion is being spent on these individuals. The article I read was incredibly biased, but it did mention that 75% of these people go on to reoffend, but that's most likely including smaller crimes too.

What do you think? The large proportion of money is spent paying staff, and that isn't really an area you can cut back on as the system is being strained already. Once you remove staff, the inmates will inevitably become deindividualised and that is disastrous when attempting to rehabilitate offenders.

Are prisons there to punish or rehabilitate? Do you think too much is being spent in this sector? How do you propose the state cuts back?

[buttons]

75% reoffend hahah
eh i have no opinions on this as i think we're too far in to it to change but just to contrast to a few systems;



Norway (thx eirik!!);
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1384308/Norways-controversial-cushy-prison-experiment--catch-UK.html

- prisoners taken to an island (obviously not all prisoners but there are about 4 of these islands in Norway)
- access to sauna, cinema, fishing, cinema, library etc
- basically taught how to rehabilitate by treating them like humans, they get normal jobs (being allowed to choose what they want to do and get paid for it) and routine, freedom to spend the day with family and other prisoners etc
- no cctv, cells, guns
- no violent incidents despite there being murderers with access to knives etc from their jobs
- 16% reoffending rate on this particular island, 20% in Norway overall. the lowest of all European rates.

comments on that article are also worth a look. one comment i thought was interesting: 'hate begets hate and trust begets trust' but obviously there is so much factors to be taken into account. basically people saying harsh systems like ours don't work, yet we all want harsher restrictions on prisons but with 75% re-offending rate, we're obviously doing something wrong. i'm usually one of those "we want harsher punishment" lot because i'm biased and know personally of people who imo deserve to be stripped of all their rights and never see daylight again but yknow... gotta take an objective view and maybe rehabilitation is more successful than punishing?

China (lol obv);

- most reported executions than the rest of the world, sometimes more than all countries combined
- used to deter other criminals, sometimes publically carried out to shock others
- focus on shaming criminals
- the 2 above points seem to work as; one of the lowest crime rates in the world, 4-6% re-offending
- 55 crimes punishable by death ~ including even prostitution and drink driving
- life is 25 years
- guilty until proven otherwise
- can be arrested, sentenced AND executed within 2 months or less = cheaper

[Inseriousity.]

Reoffend for how long after release because if you set the criteria to a week, it'd be very low and if you set it to a year it'd be high. Yeah statistics on their own bug me lol. We hardly know enough when they're mentioned but we're supposed to go 'oh no!' :P
Then there's labelling theory. Are they just more likely to get caught because police know of them and their previous convictions so more likely to reoffend.

prisoners taken to an island? is that such a good idea with brevik?

[lawrawrrr]

It's ridiculous that prisoners get so much spent on them imo. It's even more annoying when you realise it's kinda necessary. I think that (im not sure if this happens in the UK) prisoners should actually do a lot of the jobs that staff would be paid to do (such as cooking etc), and be supported more once they get out, because then they might not actually reoffend!

[Catchy]

As long as these criminals are off the streets that's all I'm bothered about lol